More than 11 million children in Yemen in acute need of aid: UNICEF

United Nation, Nov 26 (APP):: More than 11 million children in war-torn Yemen are in desperate need of humanitarian aid, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Sunday.
UNICEF’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Geert Cappelaere said that his agency had lately flown 1.9 million doses of vaccines to Yemen, describing Saturday’s shipment as a very small step amid immense need for medicine.
We hope all will live up to their promises. These supplies are urgently needed, he told reporters in Amman.
The war in Yemen is sadly a war on children. Yemen is facing the worst humanitarian crisis I have ever seen in my life, the senior UNICEF official pointed out.
“Two million children today in Yemen suffer acute malnutrition (and) almost every single Yemeni boy and girl” is in acute need of humanitarian assistance, he said.
“Today we estimate that every 10 minutes a child in Yemen is dying from preventable diseases.”
UN officials have warned that Yemen could face the world’s largest famine in decades unless a crippling blockade by a Saudi-led coalition battling Huthi rebels is lifted.
The blockade, put in place after Saudi forces intercepted a missile fired by Huthi forces at Riyadh’s international airport early this month, has further tightened the coalition’s control on the rebel-held port of Hodeida, the main conduit for UN-supervised deliveries of food and medicine.
A UN plane carrying desperately needed vaccines landed in the rebel-held Yemeni capital Sanaa on Saturday after coalition forces partly lifted the blockade, after warnings that “untold thousands” could die.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has described the current level of hunger in Yemen as unprecedented, emphasizing that 17 million people are now food insecure in the country.
It added that 6.8 million, meaning almost one in four people, do not have enough food and rely entirely on external assistance.
A recent survey showed that almost one third of families have gaps in their diets, and hardly ever consume foods like pulses, vegetables, fruit, dairy products or meat.
More than 3 million pregnant and nursing women and children under 5 need support to prevent or cure malnutrition.